easy on the cops

i have to live the unfortunate reality of passing by the little ex-circle (dawwar) in rabyeh near the jtc building. those in jordan know what i'm talking about. those who don't (or those who are but are as pissed off as me) read on..

i drive through there at least three times a week to go to a kickboxing class i go to, so i've witnessed its evolution (evolution here is used in the sense of slow change, not slow change towards the better) on a fairly constant basis. on my way i drive from medina street to rabyeh, and along the way there is the circle near the jtc building (sometimes called dawwar eletisalat). now there's usually some traffic there, and at times it reaches levels that simply clog up the circle, in which case the police are brought in to guide the traffic, but those are so rare i've witnessed them but once or twice. and even then, you never spent more than a minute waiting.

i guess since the police are too busy writing people tickets for illegal parking and speeding to work at a circle for a couple of hours a day, they decided to add traffic lights to the circle. now they added very poor lights that made the circle look like a poor syrian contraption loosely aimed at guiding traffic, with its cables dangling from above and its bases built into small concrete barrels rather than into the ground. after they turned them on, a horrific jam started forming at the circle. you would have to wait at least 5 minutes (2 light changes) before you could move out. the queue of cars extended all the way to the other weird intersection they have between medina street and the circle.

BUT, on the up-side, there was no needs for cops there anymore. thank God.

in their never-ending quest for helping the citizens, those in charge (i'm assuming amman's municipality) decided to remove the circle altogether and convert the intersection into a normal one with lights. it would, at least, ease some of the jam that took place. during their removal they used to place a metal railings to keep the cars away. one day the lights were not working, there was NO jam and the railings served as the circle. heavenly.

finally, the railings were removed and it was a full fledged intersection. until one day i was driving by and the lights suddenly all went yellow. what did we do with that? it was evolution: kill or be killed. i squeezed my way through (thank God that i wasn't taking a left) and wondered what idiot programmed the lights like that. well, i guess it was the same idiot who decided that the time of thousands of drivers is less important than the time police are supposed to be doing their job.

since that incident, the lights were working fine. until 3 days ago that is, when they went back to their yellow insanity. is anyone wondering what they did to solve THAT problem?

they had a policeman guide the traffic.